Category: Changes

Test server

Over the last few rounds it has become clear that the player base has been feeling increasingly disenfranchised and frustrated at the seeming lack of discussion around new changes. It’s clear people feel their thoughts and views have been unfairly ignored. Obviously this isn’t what the admin team want, and as a result we can now announce an excited new change in how changes in AO are developed.

Moving forward, balance changes will be conceived and implemented in the usual way, through discussions on discord and (rarely) on the forums. Once changes have been decided and implemented, they will be announced and pushed onto the new Test Server for a period of time to be tested by ANY PLAYER WHO WANTS TO.

There will now be full transparency, not only will changes be announced formally but you will physically be able to go and play them before the round starts. If you hate them and they suck, they can be reverted.

To that end, a new discord channel has been set up #change-feedback. If you would like access to the new server please go and register your interest there NOW. It is open to EVERYONE. Feedback regarding the changes will now be confined to that channel as much as possible.

Balance changes (by Panic)

Complaints were made as to the predictability of the current engine. Attacking should be predictable, and it should be possible to work out whether an attack will result in a victory or a defeat from available information. As a result the engine is going back to comparing AP to decide who wins and loses. Other features have been implemented to better deter suicide attacks.

– Points reduction changed from 35% to 50% based on clansize

The 35% reduction was hampering, but was made worse by stacking with the Building Damage reduction which has been almost completed reverted. This leaves room for a slight tweak to the deterrent for Large clans attacking small clans. Overall, the points reduction has still been scaled back by 15% for BK.

– Building damage from 30% to 2% based on clansize

The predictability of victories and defeats under the attack engine shouldn’t be compromised to protect solo or newer players. This has been all but reverted (a small number has been left for practical reasons).

– Defensive startbonus adds 25% life to buildings

– Removed extra 5 buildings per turn for Defensive startbonus

These two changes go hand in hand. The defensive bonus will now allow new, solo, and casual players to have a way to attempt to defend themselves from the experienced player base. This bonus has been redesigned to be a hindrance to competitive play, but soemthing you can take to play a more chilled style. It should remain unattractive to points and networth players, hence the removal of the more buildings per turn. The numbers are tweaked such that the weaker DBs will now mimic the stronger ones, and the stronger ones will now have the defense of AMS. An AMS will have the life of less than 4 powerplants. Defensive bonus and PPE may not be potent, and the combination of the Land rule with AMS stacking may be strong at lower networth. We will have to be vigilant for any potential impact on points play and tweak numbers accordingly. (I am confident this will not be necessary)

– Money and land gain purely based on nw loss

(attacker lost twice as much nw = 50% money & land gain)

Again, this feature allows counterplay to deter larger clans land raiding targets who are weak by virtue of being solo. Currently, larger clans gain too much benefit to just having more players. Clans who wish to land raid will now need to more strategically choose their targets, and solo or casual players can attempt to avoid being on that list by defending themselves appropriately. The numbers are fairly minor, and generally this shouldn’t be a huge deal when offensive bonus and regular attacks are used.

Fixes (by Dikdap)

– Fixed tomahawk remaining after reset

– Do not say “out of range” on the attack page in a mutual war

– Enable demolishing silo’s even if you have tomahawks

– You cannot sell more submarines then needed for tomahawks

– Fix nw calculation when buying units multiple times

– Reset sat morale too if player dies

– Fix max in market sell

– Fix: Make the saboteur a special unit everywhere

– No truncate when buying units

Visual changes (by Dikdap)

– Go automatically to the unittype tab with most units

– Menu order has changed

– Removed the ‘save user’ functionality

– Added date/time to conversations

– Fix: When you are in war & not in range & you can not peace yet, it does not show the message “not in range” anymore

– Users can be CL & CT at the same time, fixed the layout problem

– Fixed notifications on mobile (a bit lower than the fixed menu)

– Put the help for beginners on the bottom of the page

– Make tap area bigger on mobile for sell all and max fields

– Restored exploring and selling back to ajax, so no page reload is needed and messages can be read.

We know change can be scary, so without further ado.. the changes for BETA round 25.

If the attacker loses A LOT more nw than the defender, the attack is a failure This make more sense in a war game. When you lose too much of your own army, and the defender doesn’t, it’s a win for the defender. Right now it is tuned towards 2.1 times the loss. Might be tweaked later rounds.

Stolen land and money reduction based on clanmembersize difference and networth loss For instance; when you attack with a 6 player clan towards a 2 player clan, AND you lose much more nw than your defender, you won’t gain as much money and land as you used to. This is tweaked to at least a 1.5 times the loss. In that case, the maximum difference for money is 75%, for land is 55% with a clansize difference of 5 players. It works only from big to small. This is done to make it a bit more fair for smaller clans / solo players. If you notice a lot of this, try to make more effective attacks with less losses, or choose bigger clans to attack. This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

Disabled support units for this round This makes the game and interface for new players a bit simpler, and they weren’t really helpful anyway

Raid protection removed It did not fix what was broken, so we will try to fix it another way

Disabled clan opting in and out Same as above

Clan-points are scaled based on clan member size difference For instance; when you attack with a 6 player clan towards a 1 player clan, there will be a small reduction in points. If the difference is 5 players there is a maximum of 35% reduction. If you notice this a lot you might want to take on bigger clans. It works only from big to small. This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

Building damage is scaled based on clan member size difference Same as above, but the max is 30% This reduction won’t happen in a mutual war!

There is no total maximum in bank Just 10 deposits and a minimum and maximum per deposit

Medal of Recruitment When a visitor registers, he/she will be able to fill in your userid. At the end of round, the one with the most active new users to his id will win this medal. There are a couple of checks to ensure these are actual new individuals playing the game.

Public clan messages are now in plain text!

The menu stays opened on large screens until you close it again This makes you switch faster between areas of the game

If there is only one input field in the attack (step 2), prefill it. Handy for single unit attacks or spying for instance

Mobile interfaces for buildings, units, missiles and market It’s a lot smaller, but gives a better overview (thanks to Elon for the help)

Easy-spy™ buttons If you have spy-units, there will be one-click-spy buttons at several places in the game. It will go to attack and spy immediately the target province

Added the top 3 clans to the dashboard This is updated as often as the toplists

Daily summaries for people who were online the past 3 days who have enabled the Telegram bot Including top 3 pts last 24h, top 3 nw, top 3 pts. These summaries cannot be disabled yet, sorry.

We have a few nice changes for you. One of our members, Dik Dap (#2768) was kind enough to lend a hand!

Telegram bot integratedYou can activate the Assault.Online Telegram bot. Just follow the instructions on your profile page. The bot receives attack events, messages and completed researches. You can also use some basic functions to show your statistics. Courtesy of Mr. Dap!

Declare & resume war bugs fixed

Launching a missile now costs 5% extra morale

Building damage reduction now kicks in from 7500m2 land. Decreased from 10000m2.

Brand new year, brand new round. New is always better! We have some changes and bug fixes. On the menu:

Push messaging for Android & Chrome users integratedCan be activated and deactivated right here. Also added a bell icon in the menu. Will send you a push notification upon being attacked, research completed or a new message received. Unfortunately, iOS users will have to wait a bit longer for the same integration. Because currently, I have no idea how to build it, but will try to solve.

Resume war function added in again

Siege chopper life decreased from 50 to 45

Harrier life increased from 45 to 50

Harrier attack power increased from 45 to 50

Rocketeer attack power increased from 35 to 40

Battleship attack power increased from 110 to 120

50% damage reduction for buildings when target under 10.000m2 land also added for missiles and satellites.

Sliding scale implemented for building damage reductionWhen at 5.000m2 land or below, you will receive the full 50% damage reduction. Up from 5.000m2, the damage reduction will scale.e.g 40% damage reduction at 6.000m2 land, 30% damage reduction at 7.000m2 land, 20% damage reduction at 8.000m2 land, 10% damage reduction at 9.000m2 land.

Clans with 3 or less members will be able to “opt out” of clan wars. They are still attackable but you cannot declare on them and they cannot declare on you. Such clans also attain only half resources when attacking out of war, but still award full resources if attacked

By default, all clans are opted in.

This setting can only be changed once per round, and resets to “in” each round

Stop just trying to kill everyone!

Below 10k land buildings, attack power of all incoming BK is reduced by 50% (This replace the 20% reduction below 300 which was already in place)

A new research “Raid Protection” has been implemented. This research allows your province to automatically build 15 antimissile systems and 35 powerplants (as well as explore back up to 2k land if needed) if your building count drops to 0. This research takes 20 hours to complete. It has a 24 hour cooldown.

When enemy Raid Protection activates, you also gain 30 minutes of assault protection.

Medal of Misery added

Awarded to the player receiving the most attacks during a single round

Clan award “United Enemies” added

Awarded to the clain receiving the most attacks during a single round

Resetting your account will give you a 20.000.000 penalty on your Medal of Thievery score

Minor unit balance changes

Minor bug changes, most notably the session expired bug.

Finally – we would like to take this opportunity to thank everybody for their dedication over the history of AO. We are now shifting from core game and balance changes towards quality of life and recruitment changes, things aimed to grow our community. Therefore, we would also like to address a few points and make sure people remember what this game is all about.

Last round, we had a few strange things take place. First of all – we had one leader pretending to be Geronimo, faking crew messages, and causing friction in the community for no good reason. We also had someone whom physically harmed themselves after a bust up in their clan.

We also had to strip two of the Beta round 19 medals and reissue them owing to some flagrant cheating via VPN use. This is all monitored, and though we hope not to have to do this again – we will if we must.

All of which is to say, this game is here to allow us to unwind during and after work. The core community is what keeps it going, talking rubbish on Discord and debating clan strategies – thinking about how next to win the round – this is all here for our enjoyment. So take it easy, enjoy the game, relax, and be good to each other.

Pretty much all the bugs and requests from the bug Mega thread have been dealt with.

In regards to refreshing page issues.. this is a weird one, and seems to happen with a part of the players. If you are experiencing this, please report immediately and let me know which browser and operating system you’re using.

No real new stuff, other than what was already mentioned in the bug thread;

War statistics

Ability to search players

Ability to search clans

‘Latest’-block on the front page, showing last orders, conversations, forum topics and news

Mass messaging to clan members added

Back button added in attack sequence, also triggered with backspace, so you can switch back to certain steps

Total money banked added on banking page

Local events has its own button now in header

Completely new system for messaging people

Rather than having and inbox with a gazillion messages, you have 1 conversation about a subject/topic with another player. Conversation updates when new messages are added. Also much cleaner in the AO backend, less overhead, moar speed!